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Spiced Cup Cakes
1/2 lb. stale Cake Crumbs, 1/2 cup Shortening, 1/2 teaspoonful Ginger, 1/3 pt. sour Milk, (or Cream) Flour, sufficient, 1 scant pt. Molasses, 2 Eggs, 1/2 pt. warm Water, 1 heaping teaspoonful The Great "Arm & Hammer" Soda. 1 teaspoonful ea. Cinnamon, Allspice & Cloves.
Mix together the cake crumbs (or bread crumbs) molasses, melted shortening, eggs and spices, adding gradually the warm water in which you have dissolved the Soda. Then pour into the mixture the sour milk or sour cream and last, sufficient flour to make a soft dough or stiff batter. A half cup or more of currants or raisins added will prove very good in the above cakes. Use cupcake or gem moulds, having them well greased and warmed, then fill half full with the batter. Frost with chocolate icing. 1 cup Sugar,
A thrift recipe built to use up stale cake, leavened by the reaction between soda and both sour milk and molasses. The quantities are generous and several are given by eye, so expect to judge the batter by feel.
- The hinge: flour by feelThe only guide is "sufficient flour to make a soft dough or stiff batter." With this much liquid it will take a good deal of flour; add it in stages and stop when the batter mounds on the spoon rather than pouring freely.
- Old measuresA pint is 2 cups, so 1/3 pt. of sour milk is 2/3 cup, 1/2 pt. warm water is 1 cup, and a "scant pint" of molasses is just under 2 cups. Half a pound of cake crumbs may measure anywhere from about 2 to 4 cups depending on how fine they are and how loosely packed.
- Cake crumbsDry, plain cake or bread, grated or crushed fine. They act as filler and soften as they absorb the molasses and water, so let the mixture stand a few minutes before the flour goes in.
- Sour milkPeriod sour milk was naturally clabbered raw milk. Buttermilk is the direct modern equivalent; pasteurised milk left out will spoil rather than sour usefully.
- SodaArm & Hammer soda is plain sodium bicarbonate, unchanged. Dissolving it in the warm water gets it evenly distributed, and the acid in both the molasses and the sour milk does the lifting, so get the pans into the oven promptly.
- Gem mouldsCast-iron gem pans; a standard muffin tin works. Greasing and warming them, as directed, gives a better rise and a cleaner release.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350F, for 20 to 25 minutes suits cakes of this size and sugar content; molasses browns fast, so check early.
- YieldThis is a large batch; expect several dozen standard cupcakes.
- The icing is cut offThe text breaks after "1 cup Sugar," so the chocolate icing directions are incomplete on this page. Use a chocolate frosting recipe of your own.
This comes from one of the recipe pamphlets that Church & Dwight distributed to sell Arm & Hammer bicarbonate of soda, a genre of advertising cookery that flourished from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth and in which the sponsor's product is typically capitalised and complimented mid-ingredient. The recipe itself may well be older than the pamphlet: molasses-and-spice cakes raised with soda and sour milk were common in American home baking before baking powder, when the acid came from whatever was already in the larder. The use of stale cake or bread crumbs as the bulk of the batter is pure household thrift, the same instinct that produced bread pudding and brown betty, and it also gives these cakes a dense, moist crumb that a straight flour batter will not.